


dead, and alive again

by Anonymous



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Character Time Travels When They Sleep, M/M, Or do they?, Some Martin/Malcolm occurs when Malcolm is 11, Time travel might be a character hallucinating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:54:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22578910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Memory guided his footsteps. Down the narrow hall with its wood-paneled walls, towards the first bedroom, where his father had carried him all those years ago -The door was open. His father was inside.
Relationships: Malcolm Bright/Martin Whitly
Comments: 2
Kudos: 52
Collections: Fanfic Anonymous, Past Imperfect Future Unknown 2019





	dead, and alive again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [M J Holyoke (wholeyolk)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wholeyolk/gifts).



Malcolm was pretty sure he knew what to expect from his first night of sleep back in his own bed after what John Watkins did to him. 

His sleep in the hospital had been so heavily drugged it was nearly entirely dreamless; just one more reason to be glad that they broke out the good stuff for stab wounds. But even then, he’d had flashes of something else every time he'd woken up, like a nightmare had been stalking him but not quite able to catch up. He doubted the high of catching a murderer would be enough to counteract everything that had happened with Watkins – or, worse, the revelation of what his father had planned to do to him. 

Because that was what was really getting to him. He felt pretty sanguine about the stabbing, actually, though he doubted he’d get cleared for work any faster if he told Gil that. But he kept remembering the casual conviction in Watkins’ voice when he told him that his father had been planning to kill him. Malcolm had searched Watkins for tells and found nothing but certainty. He hadn’t been lying. 

Malcolm had had to completely adjust his worldview once before, when he was eleven and realized what kind of person his father was. This felt about as catastrophic. 

So he expected that, one way or another, he’d see his father in his dreams. A meeting in his father’s cell that ended with an attempted strangulation, maybe. Or a newly recovered memory of being eleven and drugged, his father’s dark shadow hanging over him with a knife in one hand. 

Instead, he found himself in the woods.

He didn’t realize he was dreaming at first as he stumbled over roots and stones. He'd never been the outdoorsy type, but the quiet sound of wind through branches and distant birdsong seemed right. The midafternoon sunlight filtering in through the trees felt perfectly real too, as did the way every step made him feel like someone was tugging on his stitches. He only realized it when he came across the cabin. It looked perfectly placed, made of long planks of the same kind of wood as the surrounding trees, as normal and commonplace as probably a dozen other just like it scattered through the woods, except for the instant sense of recognition that cut through Malcolm at the sight of it.

He stared. It almost seemed to stare back, the dappling of shadows left on it by the woods around them somehow dark and ominous.

“This is it,” Malcolm said to himself, flexing his hands to keep them from shaking. This was where his father had planned to kill him. 

The heavy wood door barely moved under his hand until he put his elbow into it, pulling on his stitches and making the rusted hinges shriek. Watkins hadn’t done much to maintain the property. 

The cabin felt cramped on the inside. The ceiling seemed to be pressing down on him, penning him in. Maybe because last time he’d been in it, he’d been much smaller, and the ceiling much higher in comparison. But it was coming back to him – the fresh, cold smell of the place, and the way the floorboards creaked under his feet. He’d always been cursed with vivid dreams, but this was on a whole different level. 

Memory guided his footsteps. Down the narrow hall with its wood-paneled walls, towards the first bedroom, where his father had carried him all those years ago - 

Malcolm stopped.

The door was open. His father was inside.

Malcolm saw his shoulders, first. He was bent over the bed, touching someone’s face. The small, limp hand of a child rested on top of the covers. 

“My boy,” Martin murmured, a familiar smile in his voice.

That voice drew Malcolm closer. Without meaning to, he found himself crossing the threshold, his fingers catching on the doorframe as he passed. 

The Malcolm on the bed looked asleep, except for when his eyes would half-open for a long moment, until he lost the fight again and they shut. It was possible to mistake him for a child who was too stubborn to sleep when he should, except for the time of day and the pungent, slightly sweet odor of chloroform in the air. His father must have just drugged him again in case it had worn off too much on the car ride up. 

Martin didn’t seem to care. He kept smiling down at his son on the bed, stroking his hair. “We’ll have a lot of fun tomorrow,” he said. “You won’t believe what I have planned. You have to do something special on a special trip, right?” 

The child on the bed didn’t respond. It looked as if he’d finally lost the struggle and fallen asleep completely. 

Martin sighed and stood. His hand slid down until he was cupping his son’s face. “Sweet dreams, my boy,” he said, and then he bent down and kissed him on the mouth.

It could have been sweet if it had been someone else and it had been just a brush. Instead Martin leaned down even further, deepening the kiss into something alarmingly adult, and the boy on the bed moaned. 

Behind the two of them, Malcolm gasped. 

His father whirled around in an instant, too fast for Malcolm to process what he had seen, and lunged at him, grinding his forearm into Malcolm’s throat so hard that his head knocked against the doorframe as he was pinned to one side of it.

Malcolm wheezed, feeling himself start to choke from the pressure against his throat. He shoved at his father with both his hands, but he was still weak from the hospital, and his father bore down at him, face dark and furious, grip completely unrelenting as the pressure built up in Malcolm's lungs.

Well. Malcolm _had_ assumed he was going to see what his father looked like when he wanted to kill him tonight. 

But after a moment in which Malcolm stared, wide-eyed and literally breathless, into his father’s eyes, his father seemed to realize something. “Malcolm?” He asked, disbelieving, his own eyes widening as they scanned Malcolm's face intently. He finally relaxed his grip, the pressure on Malcolm's throat easing, though he didn’t move away at all.

Malcolm choked in a desperate breath, head bowing forward as he coughed, his body getting used to breathing again after the shock of being interrupted. Through it, his father held him up. Malcolm could feel the intensity of his gaze on him, but he couldn't do anything about it until his breathing finally slowed again and he could look up and meet his eyes.

This close, their breaths mingled together. His father’s beard nearly brushed against Malcolm’s cheek as he stared at him, too many fleeting expressions crossing his face for even Malcolm to read. "You're all grown up," Martin said. 

Malcolm’s lips parted, but he found he had nothing to say. 

Martin seemed to understand anyway, just by looking at him. That had been Malcolm’s fear since he was eleven, that his father somehow understood him better than he did, so of course here it was true. “Malcolm,” Martin said again, voice softer this time, before leaning in even closer to kiss him. 

His mouth was hot and insistent against Malcolm’s, tongue gentle but firm as it rubbed against his, supremely confident in what he wanted, a mirror to how he had kissed the eleven-year-old Malcolm. His arm slid against Malcolm’s neck until his hand was touching his jaw tenderly, tracing the lines of it as if to memorize it, and his other hand rubbed Malcolm’s hip.

And Malcolm, despite everything, found himself kissing back. 

It should have felt like he was destroying himself. Instead, it felt just right, pinned up against his father in the room where he had probably meant to kill him, feeling the full intensity of his affection. John Watkins hadn’t been lying, but somehow it didn’t matter. His father _loved_ him, more than anything in the world, more than the world itself. 

Malcolm couldn’t handle it. He dug his own nails into his palm, forgetting for a moment that this was a dream, that he wouldn’t be able to feel it - 

And the sharp pain when they dug into his flesh was so startling because of it that he found himself jerking awake in his restraints, panting. His hand hurt and his lips were still tingling with the feeling of his father’s against them, and he had never in his life understood himself better, or hated it more.


End file.
